Ontario hydro workers head to New York in wake of Hurricane Sandy

More Ontario hydro workers headed to New York City Sunday to help with power restoration efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

They will join 145 other workers that Hydro One, the province’s electricity corporation, first sent down south on Friday.

Brad Cumming, of Burlington Hydro, was heading down with 17 other workers from Burlington and Oakville.

“We’re going to be helping them restore the power system,” he said. “They requested help through the electrical distribution authority, which is connected to all the local utilities.”

A number of hydro workers from around Ontario headed down as to not strain any local crews too badly.

“I know when we were leaving the border . . . a bunch were just coming behind us,” Cumming said.

He believes this is the first time local utilities like Burlington, Oakville, Kingston, Milton and Hamilton are all leaving town to help with disaster relief.

“I’ve been to the ice storm ’98 in Quebec, and you went there and you knew there were trees down and a lot of snow, but people didn’t actually lose anything,” Cumming said. “This is the first time we’re going into something as a group that people are devastated and have lost everything.”

From the crews that are already down there, Cumming said they were warned to bring full tanks of gas due to the fuel shortage, and that the communication between all the utility companies has been great so far.

“We’re excited to help out and we’re ready for any challenge that comes in front of us,” he said.

The crews are expecting to stay anywhere from a week or two.

Nearly 1 million people in New Jersey and almost 730,000 in New York state are still without power since Sandy slammed the U.S. East Coast on Monday.